Equity firm invests up to $100 million in Yelp

A private equity firm said Wednesday it plans to invest up to $100 million in Yelp Inc., a month after the popular online recommendation service reportedly walked away from a bid by Google Inc.

Elevation Partners, a private equity firm co-founded by singer-musician Bono, said it has invested $25 million in capital in San Francisco’s Yelp.

And Elevation Partners plans to increase the total investment to as much as $100 million by buying shares from Yelp employees and other shareholders.

The investment would give Elevation Partners a minority stake in Yelp, said Marc Bodnick, a managing director and co-founder.

With the growing influence of social networks and the proliferation of mobile devices, online reviews “are a very valuable content asset to have,” Bodnick said. “They have a lot of growth ahead of them in lots of different directions.”

Yelp, founded in 2004, said traffic to its site increased to 26 million unique visitors in December. The site has more than 9 million user-generated reviews of restaurants, shops and services.

According to published reports, Google had been negotiating to buy Yelp in a deal worth at least $500 million. But the deal wasn’t finalized.

The privately held Yelp had previously raised $31 million in funding and was valued at about $223 million, according to a report posted on SharesPost.com.

Elevation Partners is a $1.9 billion private equity firm with investments in companies such as Palm Inc. Co-founder Fred Anderson is Apple Inc.’s former chief financial officer, while another former high-ranking Apple executive, Avie Tevanian, joined Elevation this month as a managing director.